Sontje Hansen is in place at NEC. The 21-year-old attacker transferred from Ajax to the Nijmegen team on a free transfer last summer and is a regular starter at his new club. On Sunday evening he will take on Feyenoord with NEC in the final of the TOTO KNVB Cup. In an interview with the Noordhollands Dagblad he looks back on his first season at NEC.

Hansen was for a long time seen as one of the great talents from Ajax's youth academy. Although he also made his debut in the main squad of the Amsterdam team at the end of 2019, he never managed to become a permanent fixture there.

That's why he left last summer to try his luck in Nijmegen. So far he has played 33 matches for NEC, in which he scored 5 goals and 7 assists. On Sunday, Hansen can win a prize with his club: the TOTO KNVB Cup.

“It was an immediate physical challenge in the first few weeks,” says the attacker Noordhollands Dagblad back to his early days at NEC last year. “The preparation was tough. It was heavier than I was used to at Ajax.”

“At Ajax it was a lot of training on technique, here it was more about running. Phew, so this is the Eredivisie, I thought. It helped me a lot, that tough preparation, because it is hard work here, a lot of defending.”

Another big difference Hansen noticed is nutrition. “I really needed to improve the physical aspect. The nutritionist gave me a complete schedule. What's best to eat before and after competitions, and so on. Someone else on the medical staff told me what time I should have dinner, what time I should have a snackie can take, what time I should go to sleep, things like that.”

“I was used to eating later in the evening. As a result, I often went to sleep too late,” says Hansen. “All that advice helped. At Ajax that had to come from within yourself. They are more concerned with this. At Ajax they really focus on the football technical part and they give you more freedom with other things. We also train harder in the gym here than at Ajax.”

More sports news